Detail Of A Scene On Conversation

I paint her
through the brushstrokes of my father's voice.
She came he said to return a tool;
a wrench bearing the slush of time and decay.
Rusted steel, tarnished strength,
she encompassed what she felt.
The instrument was useless,
yet, belonged at the entrance of the barn
where they conversed.
Here, it would be admitted
to an asylum of warped floorboards
and sunlight wailing in sheets
from corner to pole,
while mute gears yearned to be greased,
touched by hands shadowing the harvest.
This would be its home,
a broken-down dream
that once housed a bountiful share
of engine and crop.
Now that shelter framed her,
in a slant of light
piercing the tin roof,
the sad ache of bone and wood.

Fading timbers of maroon
held dark against the paler sheen of woman.
She stood creased in red hair
and denim speckled light blue
like eggs of nesting water fowl.
Softly, humbly she stooped down
and placed the wrench at the feet
of her mentor ,
a man in a wheelchair.
She had given him back,
a grip on the past,
a fallen apprentice ---
herself.

LINEAGE

Over the water
trees slide open.
their parasol of shade.
Beneath a nude girl stands
wet from a swim
and whitening their shadow
of dark lace.
Wind-cast
her long braid sinks slowly
into the green haze
of summer.
On its soft-bristled tip
a moth bobs
keenly aware
the past is floating
in shallows of grass.
There, shining stalks embalm
whispers of man and woman
who made love at twilight;
who glimpsed their daughter's face
along the cheekbone
of a porcelain moon.

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